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Following the death of a prominent leader of the arab-lebanese resistance, murdered by the Zionist forces while on Syrian soil, I address this open letter to all left-wing intellectuals and activists who have aligned themselves with the Syrian “revolution” and believe that by dreaming of the fall of Damascus, they are defending the Palestinian cause.

In the spring of 2011, you were telling us that the Arab revolutions represented an unprecedented hope for the peoples living under oppressive, bloodthirsty tyrants. Our excessive optimism persuaded us to listen to your arguments for this miraculously flourishing democracy and your proclamations on the universal human rights.

You almost persuaded us that these popular uprisings deposing the Tunisian and Egyptian dictators were going to universally sweep tyranny from the arab world, in Libya as in Syria, in Yemen as in Bahrain and who knows where else.

However the flaws in this evolving narrative began to reveal themselves. The first glaring flaw appeared in Libya. A UN resolution, adopted by the Security Council to ostensibly save endangered civilians, transformed itself into a blank cheque for the military removal of a head of state that had become undesirable for his western partner states. This “regime change” operation can be considered one of the worst moments of the neo-conservative era, accomplished on behalf of the US by two powerful European nations in search of neo-imperialist influence, it precipitated a disaster for which Libya is still paying the price. The collapse of this unitary state in its infancy delivered the country into the hands of the tribes & factions whose unbridled ambitions were driven by oil lusting western scavengers.

Despite this, the “good souls” among you managed to find “extenuating circumstances” for this operation thus justifying the demands for a similar fate for the government in Damascus. Consequently, the winds of revolution that were blowing in syria seemed to validate your interpretation of events and retrospectively provided a rationale for the humanitarian warmongering unleashed against the Tripoli potentate.

However, far from the mainstream media arena, certain analysts observed that the Syrian people were not unanimous. The anti-government protests arose in certain towns, traditional bastions of the Islamist opposition and these feverish protests by those impoverished by the financial crisis did not present any real threat to the government in Damascus.

You chose to ignore these rational, logical warning signs. Simply because these facts did not correspond with your narration of events, you extracted only that which suited your interpretation. Where these objective observers saw a polarisation of syrian society, you only wanted to see a bloody tyrant assassinating his people. Where a dispassionate view would have allowed you to discern the weaknesses but also the strengths of the Syrian state, you deployed a self righteous rhetoric to bring to trial a government that is not the only perpetrator of violence inside Syria.

You saw many protests against Bashar Al Assad yet you failed to see the overwhelming marches in support of the government and the proposed reforms, these marches filled the streets of Damascus, Aleppo and Tartous but you didnt see them. You have highlighted the macabre accounts of the government victims but failed to report those of the victims of the armed opposition. In your eyes, there are good and bad victims. There are victims that you talk about and those you don't want to hear about. You have deliberately chosen to see one side and ignore the other.

At the same time, the French government, whose domestic policies you openly criticize to maintain the illusion of independence, has entirely supported your narrative. Curiously, your narrative coincides perfectly with that of French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, the master of servility, combining unconditional support for the Israeli war against the Palestinians with a Pavlovian alignment with the US leadership and hostility towards arab resistance. You seem unperturbed by your apparent marriage to the French Foreign Office.

You were defending the Palestinians while dining with their assassins behind their backs. You even accompanied french state officials on a visit to the State of Israel. You are willing accomplices to a French President who has declared that he will ” always support the Israeli leaders”. It seems that was not enough to scandalise you and you still joined everyone else who boarded the plane with the President.

You correctly condemned US military intervention in Iraq in 2003. You were left “cold” by the carpet bombing for democracy and you doubted the educational value of surgical strikes. However, your indignation at such “high tech” gunboat diplomacy seems bizarrely selective. Now you justify the hue and cry against Damascus that you found intolerable 10 years earlier, against Baghdad. A decade has sufficed to render you so malleable that you envisage the salvation of the Syrian people to be a rain of cruise missiles targeting a country that has done nothing to harm you.

You have denied your anti-imperialist convictions to be enthusiastically wedded to the Washington agenda. Shamelessly, not only were you applauding the B52s but you upheld the most grotesque US propaganda, when you should have been immunised against it by the Iraqi precedent and the unforgettable lies from the Bush era.

While you were inundating the French press with your inaccuracy, an outstanding American investigative journalist tore the pitiful chemical weapons “false flag” to shreds. A false flag destined to pin responsibility for a chemical attack onto Bashar Al Assad despite no international organisation supporting these accusations. The experts at the Massachussets Institute of Technology and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons even went so far as to accuse the opposition of carrying out the attacks.

Ignoring facts and concealing them where necessary you played your miserable part in this orchestra of lies. Even worse, you continue to do so. Even Obama had said he didnt believe it, but you persisted in regurgitating your lies like guard dogs that bark long after the intruder has escaped. To what aim? To justify the bombing, by your own government, of a small sovereign state, whose greatest crime was to resist the imperialist order. To come to the aid of a Syrian “revolution” whose true face you have hidden behind a mask, perpetuating the myth of a moderate, democratic opposition that, in reality, exists only in the meeting rooms of luxury hotels in Doha, Paris or Ankara.

You have therefore exalted this “Syrian revolution” but have turned a blind eye to its mafia practices, its sectarian ideology and its troubling and dubious funding. You have painstakingly obscured the interfaith hatred that inspires this morbid aversion to other faiths, a hatred held in place by the Wahhabi ideological cement.

You knew that the secular Baathist government acted as a life insurance for all minorities inside Syria but you persisted in discrediting and ridiculing those who came to the defence of the persecuted Christian communities. But that's not all. On the day of reckoning there remains one ultimate ignominy: you have endorsed the politics of Laurent Fabius who has declared that Al Nusra, Syrian branch of Al Qaeda is “doing a good job”. No compassion for the mutilated civilians on the streets of Homs or the Alawites of Zahra massacred by the “rebels”, in your view these human beings have no significance.

Between 2011 and 2016, the masks have fallen. You refer to the international law but you applaud its violation against a Sovereign State. You pretend to promote democracy for the Syrians but you are the harbingers of the terrorism that is prolonging their suffering. You say you defend the Palestinians but you are on the same side as Israel. When a Zionist missile is launched at Syria, don't worry, it will never harm your friends. Thanks to Israel, thanks to the CIA, and thanks to you, these courageous “rebels” will continue to work towards a “brighter” future for Syria under the Takfiri banner. The Zionist missile will, in fact, kill one of the leaders of the Arab resistance that you have cynically betrayed.

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”

- Samuel P. Huntington, 1996, p.51.

For centuries, Western imperialism has terrorised the world, using violence to occupy lands and expropriate resources and markets. From Asia and the Middle East to Africa, millions of innocent people, mostly women and children have been killed to satisfy Western appetite for violence and barbarism, and millions more have become displaced and refugees. Enhance by sophisticated false propaganda to manipulate public opinions and justify aggression, Western imperialism led by the U.S. is the greatest menace to the survival of humanity today.

After more than two years of covert war, including economic sanctions on food and medicine, the U.S. and its allies or vassals (France, Britain and Israel in particular) are preparing their armies to wage overt aggressive war on the people of Syria citing the same lie that led to the bloodbath in Iraq, “chemical weapons”. As most people know, the U.S. war on the Iraqi people was one of the most unjust barbaric wars that have ever been inflicted on defenceless nations, a major international crime.

Sadly, the thirst for another bloodbath among Western imperialists is as big as ever. In order to sell the war to the American people and world public, Western leaders invoke the Nazi’s beloved phrase of “humanitarian intervention” as a “moral justification”. It is the same “moral justification” that terrorised the Iraqi people and caused the deaths of more than one-and-a-half million innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children. After more than a decade of murderous military occupation, Iraq –once a progressive nation and an envy of many nations – is a deliberately destroyed cauldron of violence, human misery and deprivation for everyone to see. Instability and violence have gripped Iraq since the murderous invasion. Libya is the same. The West-invented “Humanitarian intervention” is a convenient tool to manipulate public opinions and mask Western violence as a “just war”.

The U.S. and its vassals are accusing (without credible evidence) the Syrian Government of using “chemical weapons against civilians”. The chemical attack in Syria is one of many lies fabricated by the Mossad (the Israeli Gestapo) and fed to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then spread by the Israeli and Western media. It is a planned and baseless pretext to justify aggression. The current UN team investigating the chemical attack takes its orders from Washington and was instructed by the U.S. to only determine if chemical weapons had been used and not who used them. According to Michael Mandel, a professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Canada, “because the U.S. promised to intervene militarily if gas were used, giving the [terrorists] who are on the run [chased by the Syrian Army] a huge incentive to use it and giving the Syrian Government an equally huge disincentive”.

Carla Del Ponte, UN Commissioner on Syria

According to the Minnesota Mint Press News (29 August 2013), Syrian residents in Ghouta have confirmed that Saudi-armed terrorists were behind the chemical attack on their neighbourhood on the outskirt of the Syrian Capital Damascus. In a detailed report on the use of chemical weapons in Syria by UN commissioner on Syria, Carla Del Ponte stated:

"Our investigators have been interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals. According to their report of last week, which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated. I was a little bit stupefied by the first indications we got ... they were about the use of nerve gas by the opposition."

However, the U.S. dismissed the report and insisted on an “inspection” that covers all Syria. A recent Russian report presented to the UN Security Council, show that the Western-backed terrorists were responsible for the March 2013 chemical attack in Khan al-Assad.

In Dec. 2012 the US State Dept. posted a declaration describing the Al-Nusra Front as an alias of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The group has claimed responsibility for killing scores of people and stated its plan to replace the Assad gov't with a strict Islamic state.
Furthermore, in May 2013, OE Watch reported that Turkish security forces found sarin gas in the homes of suspected Western-backed (al-Nusra terrorists).

The gas was reportedly to be used to make bombs. It is most likely that, Israel, the C.I.A., Saudi Arabia, Britain and France are complicit in supplying the terrorists with chemical weapons in order to justify Western aggression against Syria. In fact U.S. President Obama (indirectly) suggested the use of chemical weapons by drawing a “red line” on their use. That is, if chemical weapons are used, we will go to war. Therefore, the U.S. and Israel have an obvious motive in accusing the Syrian Government of using chemical weapons.

A schematic of a white phosphorus bomb as used against the Palestinian people in Gaza on January 3, 2009. Is this not a chemical weapon? Israel also used white phosphorus in its 34-day war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 (and lost). The U.S. military in Iraq also used this weapon during a November 2004 operation against insurgents in the city of Fallujah.

One wonders why when Israel and the U.S. use chemical weapons, including white phosphorus, napalm, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium to murder innocent civilians (in broad daylight), most Western governments and the media turned blind eye. In the 2008/2009 the Israeli fascist regime killed over 1500, innocent civilians, including 400 children in unprovoked attacks on an entirely defenceless and besieged population of the Gaza Concentration Camp in Palestine. Despite world-wide condemnation of the Israeli regime, John Kerry and the mostly Zionist U.S. Congress rushed to praise Israel’s terror and provided Israel with more cash, weapons, including white phosphorous and cluster bombs and diplomatic backing. There were no red lines in Palestine or in Iraq, except those drawn in Palestinians and Iraqis blood. The U.S. and its vassals view war crimes through an imperialist lens of “how this serves our interests”.

Photo: A white phosphorus bomb raining down on Palestinians in Gaza in 2009. New York medical staff reported on the toxicity of white phosphorus:

Like Iraq and Libya, Syria is targeted on behalf of the fascist state of Israel. The aim is to control the Middle East military by destroying any resistance to Israel's fascist (Zionist) ideology. After the atrocity in Libya, the U.S. and its allies resorted to using proxy terrorists to implement their imperialist agenda. The so-called "rebels" (a common euphemism for Western-backed terrorists in Western media) are a collection of U.S.-Israel backed terrorists and foreign mercenaries. They are openly recruited, trained, armed, and directed by the U.S., Israel, NATO members and U.S. allies, including the disgraceful and corrupt dictators of the Middle East – Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc. (New York Times). In short, they are foot soldiers used to facilitate Western military invasions and the destabilisation of the region. If the so-called “rebels” are truly Muslims fighting for democracy, why are they destroying Syria and terrorising the Syrian people?

True Muslims do not fight on U.S.-Israel’s side against fellow Muslims. However, associating the terrorists with Islam is part of the U.S.-Israel racist campaign to demonise Islam and justify war against Muslims. Like Iraq and Libya, once Syria has been completely destroyed, a group of U.S.-trained expatriates and criminals will be installed as a “government” to legitimise the expropriation of the nation’s land, natural resources and market. The terrorists will be encouraged to fight each other for turf or will be airlifted to soften and prepare the ground of the next target. Just take a look at what is happening in the Middle East. Israel is the biggest and only beneficiary of this “creative chaos” strategy.

Gilbert Achcar | Bernard Henry-Levy |Fawaz Gerges

The Western-orchestrated “Arab Spring” provides a useful platform not only for anti-Muslim neo-fascist, such as Gilbert Achcard, Bernard-Henry Levy and Fawaz Gerges to promote their hostility to Islam, but also an opportunity for Western apologists to show their loyalty and obsequiousness to Western imperialism. A careful reading of the “Left” liberals’ response to the Western-backed terror in Syria, reveals that the “Left” liberals have display a staggering level of complacency, complicity and outright hostility to the Syrian people. Representatives of the milieu of the “Left” liberals led by the like of Noam Chomsky have lost credibility. Their arguments are part of the standard propaganda talking points that serve Israel-U.S. Zionist ideology. Strikingly, not only the “Left” liberals failed to think about Israel-U.S. Zionist ideology, they made serious efforts to spread Western propaganda that the war on Syria is a “civil war” between Syrians.

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky, the darling of the “Left” and the so-called “arguably the most important intellectual alive today” is leading the propaganda campaign. In recent interviews, Chomsky engaged in what can best be described as, highly misleading imperialist propaganda. On 16 June 2013, Chomsky, told al-akhbar newspaper:

“First of all, Israel was not opposed to Assad. He has been more or less the kind of dictator they wanted. He has done the kind of things they wanted. The U.S. has no opposition to Assad. He was cooperating on intelligence and they did not like everything, but he was pretty satisfactory.” (Al-akhbar English, 16 June 2013).

“Israel has done nothing to indicate that it is trying to bring down the Assad regime. There are growing claims that the West intends to supply the opposition with arms. I believe this is quite misleading. The fact of the matter is, that were the United States and Israel interested in bringing down the Syrian regime there is a whole package of measures they could take before they came to the arms-supply option. All these other options remain available, including, for example, America encouraging Israel to mobilize its forces along the northern border, a move that would not produce any objections from the international community and which would compel the regime to withdraw its forces from a number of frontline positions and relieve the pressure on the opposition. But this has not happened, nor will it, so long as America and Israel remain unwilling to bring down Assad regime. They may not like the regime, but it is nevertheless a regime that is well practiced in accommodating their demands and any unknown alternative might prove worse in this respect. Much better, then, to watch the Syrians fight and destroy each other”.

What a distortion of reality by Chomsky!

Israel's Missile attack on port city of Latakia

Chomsky's distortion of reality is based on a deeply-entrenched Zionist belief, that Israel is innocent of any crimes. To paraphrase Frantz Fanon, Chomsky has shown that he is unable to deal with cognitive dissonance and has worked hard to “protect his core belief, often rationalising, ignoring and even denying anything that doesn’t fit in with the his core belief”.Such false propaganda designed to shield Israel and allows Israelis to believe falsely that they’re innocent bystanders, even victims. The truth is Israel is directly involved in the foreign-backed aggression against Syria. In coordination with the U.S. and the Turkish army, the Israeli army continues its unprovoked aggression against Syria, including the recent missiles attack (05 July 2013) on the port city of Latakia. Iran is thrown in the mix by the “Left” liberals to deflect attention away from Israel. It is Israel, not Iran, which is deeply involved in the war on Syria.

Together, with the U.S., Israel is the major supplier of weapons, including chemical weapons to the terrorists to unleash against the Syrian people. Once the Western-backed terrorists were on the run, chased by the Syrian Army, Israel in coordination with the U.S. and Turkey came to their aid. The latest atrocity is a case in point. Chomsky failed to even mention that since the Western-backed violence erupted in Syria, Israel has been the only state that has openly attacked Syria unprovoked. This is consistent with Chomsky’s support for Israel, as he often said that he is “the biggest supporter of the state of Israel”.

Amos Yaldin, Israeli Intelligence Chief

Much of the war on Syria has been planned by pro-Israel Zionist think-tank like the Brookings Institute in the U.S. It is part of Israel’s Zionist ideology to dominate the Middle East by force and remove any resistance to Israel’s Zionist expansion. It is Israel which driving the U.S. to war on Syria. As former Israeli Intelligence Chief, Amos Yaldin told the audience at the Israel Policy Forum in February 2013:

“And this [Syrian] military, which is a huge threat to Israel, is now also weakening and, in a way, disintegrating. We still have risk from Syria – a risk of being an al-Qaeda country, a Somalia-type country – but from military point of view, each one of these is less dangerous than the Syrian regular army.”

In addition, the Israeli army (in coordination with the Turkish army) is on full alert on the border with Syria and coordinating with the terrorists. Furthermore, with the backing of the Israeli army, the terrorists have recentlyoccupied the UN border post in Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They were subsequently defeated by the Syrian Army and fled into the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan. As a result of the violence, the Austrian UN “peace-keeping” force withdrew from the area. The entire Middle East has been turned into a bloodbath specifically to enhance Israel military dominance and advance Israel’s Zionist-fascist ideology.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians rallied in Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus on Wednesday in support of President Bashar al-Assad. The great majority of Syrians support Assad and the government. What is happening is not a civil war as the western media describes it. These rallies are reminiscent of the great marches by the Libyan people who supported Moammar Kaddafi before the western-backed terrorists tortured and murdered him.

In another interview with the Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star (18 June 2013), Chomsky went to great length to portray the U.S.-Israel war on Syria in an ignorant and devious term:“Syria is destroying itself”. He said: “The country is heading toward suicide, it is destroying itself and it is very dangerous.”In Chomsky parlance: It is a civil war between the Syrian people (“Sunni versus Shiite”) and we are not involved. What a crass dishonesty, false propaganda and mind-boggling distortions of reality. Chomsky knows that there is no civil war taking place in Syria. He knows that Syria is under Western-backed terrorist attacks. Chomsky knows very well who the perpetrators of the violence in Syria are and who their backers are. From the outset (March 2011), it has been Western-backed terrorists (not “peaceful demonstrators”) who have been wreaking havoc on Syria and killing civilians who opposed them. Nowhere in Chomsky’s interviews has he acknowledged that the U.S. has been training, financing, and arming the terrorist in for almost two years. He is for a UN-backed war on Syria.

Like many Western propagandists, Chomsky’s aim is to mislead the public that sectarian hate exists among Muslims and that the Syrian people are fighting among themselves. The so-called “sectarian violence” is part of the U.S.-Israel “creative chaos” strategy to fragment and divide the Middle East along ethnic and religious lines. Chomsky fails to even mention that Syria is a pluralistic society and that the overwhelming majority of the Syrian people support President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian legitimate government. As Russia’s President Vladimir Putin accurately observed:

“The Syrian Government is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people and not those liver-eating terrorists”.

Chomsky knows very well that the war in Syria is not between the Syrian people, but between the Syrian legitimate Government and foreign-backed terrorists and criminal mercenaries. It is a well-known fact that what the U.S.

Members of the "Free Syrian Army" so-called using a child to behead a prisoner shown in a video the FSA circulated. Der Spiegel described the "rebels" methods of torture and slitting throats in March 2012 reporting between 200 and 250 "traitors" slaughtered by the terrorists.

and it allies, including Israel and the Gulf dictators call “rebels" are foreign-backed terrorists and mercenaries that include al-Qaeda terrorists. Their crimes ranging from eating human flesh, cutting throats, beheadings, abducting and slaughtering clergymen and scholars, recruiting children, robbing factories and transporting them to Turkey and committing hundreds of terrorists acts. We know now that the U.S. and its allies have been openly training the terrorists and supplying them with weapons and cash.

Even Chomsky’s beloved Zionist newspapers, the despicable New York Times and the Washington Post have acknowledged the U.S. role in financing and arming the terrorists against the legitimate Syrian Government. According to the Wall Street Journal, President Obama’s legal team has warned him that arming the terrorists violates international law. The terrorist were directed by their supporters (“Friends of Syria”) to attack population centres (cities and towns) as primary battle grounds to give the impression that the terrorist attacks are in fact a “civil war” between the Syria people. It is consistent with U.S.-Israel policy of targeting the civilian populations.

It is important to keep in mind that Chomsky is not just a Zionist-propagandist. Chomsky is a global propaganda corporation. His repetitive and cheap propaganda are published by his supporters in the Zionist media and spread around the world. The “Chomsky Cult” is the equivalent of BBC or CNN propaganda. It is true that Chomsky has called the U.S. and Israel “terrorist states that pose the greatest threat to world’s peace”. His empty rhetoric is designed to disguise his main propaganda thesis that, “the U.S. is the greatest and freest country in the world”, and blames the USon Israel's war crimes rather than Israel itself. While Chomsky often criticised U.S. foreign policy, he is not fundamentally against U.S. imperialism. If he is honest, Chomsky needs to ask himself whose side he is on, a U.S.-Israel led murderous Zionism or a civilised community of diverse nations.

Finally, here in Australia, it is the last week of the election campaign and it is used to promote aggression, regurgitating Obama’s threat against the people of Syria. Meanwhile, the Australian Government – an obedient U.S. lapdog – is celebrating its one month Presidency of the UN Security Council. Australia’s main goal in September will be to please the U.S. regime and unconditionally supports U.S. terror in all its forms and at all costs. As the violence escalates in Syria, Australian immigration officials are busy issuing passports to Australian mercenaries joining the West-backed terror in Syria. According to the Time News, “Australians now make up the largest contingent from any developed nation in the Syrian [foreign terrorist] forces”.

Moreover, Australia’s Foreign Minister, Bob Carr (a carbon copy of his predecessor, the ignorant Alexander Downer) has called for the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in order to change the Government. Imagine the outrage had it been a Muslim leader calling for the assassination of Kevin Rudd or the ignorant Bob Carr himself. However, most Australians have none of it, if it will not stop a few thousands desperate refugees fleeing imperialism terror and trying to reach Australia by boat.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly in December 1964 in New York, the Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara described imperialism as:

“A carnivorous animal that feeds on unarmed peoples. […] That is what distinguishes the imperial ‘white men’”.

The only way to defeat this carnivorous animal is by uniting anti-imperialist local and global forces. It is a test of conscience for every Westerner and proof of whether Western civilization is anything more than a facade for brute barbarism.

Ghali Hassan is an independent researcher and writer living in Australia.

This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!

This is something I’ve been meaning to post about ever since starting this blog; it’s a subject immensely important to our current global situation and international climate and it’s an angle largely avoided in mainstream journalism.It is a fascinating, though rather grim, story, spanning the First World War, the creation of the states of Israel, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, and taking in Lawrence of Arabia, the fall of Gadaffi in Libya, the Syria Civil War and Rise of Islamic State, among other things. It’s a story of long-term manipulation, insidious indoctrination, and secret, ‘mythical’ works of literature.These two ideologies – Wahhabism in Islam and Zionism which is linked primarily to the Jewish religion – may seem like unrelated entities on the surface of it…

But these two ideologies are largely responsible for the situation in the Middle East today; a situation that doesn’t just effect the Middle East, but as we’ve seen more and more since 9/11, effects the US, Europe, the West and probably the entire world. These two ideologies are responsible for and bound up in decades of violence, war, suffering and manipulation. These two ideologies are, it can be demonstrated, flip-sides of the same coin. And these two ideologies can both be traced back to the same approximate era – roughly 100 years ago, during the events of the First World War.

What has been the legacy of both Zionism and Wahhabism in the world? And what is the truth about their origins? To begin with, an abbreviated history (for those of you unfamiliar) of the origins of first Zionism and then Wahhabism…

–‘Der Judenstaat’, the Balfour Declaration and the Origins of Zionism…–

‘Zionism’ is a complicated term to define in some ways, all the more so for the sheer amount of exaggeration and misinformation around on the web; there’s political Zionism, which is bound up in serving the interests of the state of Israel. There’s religious Zionism, which refers to Jewish or Christian interest in the state of Israel in terms of fulfilling Biblical prophecy or “divine will”. These two schools of Zionism could in some instances be entirely separate; people can be political Zionists without being religious Zionists or even vice-versa (such as Christian organizations who are Zionist for the sake fulfilling perceived Bible texts).

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Zionism is just as Christian as it is Jewish.

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But the point is that the aim of Zionism originally was the restoration of the Jewish Homeland in what was then Palestine; a goal that was accomplished comprehensively in 1948 in the shadow of the Holocaust (though it had its roots as an international movement from the time of the First World War). Beyond that point, the continued operation of Zionism can be regarded as a political movement aimed at furthering the interests nationally and internationally of that artificially created nation and at ensuring the security and protection of the state of Israel. Many conspiracy theorists and anti-Zionist commentators also as a matter of course link Zionism – both religious and political – with an altogether-less-reliable concept of a ‘global Jewish conspiracy’ to control the world; as that particular area is more speculative than demonstrably historical, I’m steering clear of it as far as this post goes.So if we avoid for now any pseudo-history or speculative theories, Zionism in its mainstream form is believed to have originated with Theodor Herzl in 1896; a Jewish writer living in Austria-Hungary, he published Der Judenstaat or The Jews State.

In it he argued that the only solution to the “Jewish Question” in Europe was the creation of a state for the Jewish people (this was decades before a certain someone else came up with their own “solution” to the “Jewish question” in Europe). Anti-Semitism was so widespread in Europe that Herzl saw the creation of a national sanctuary for his people as the only long-term answer. And so Zionism was born; or at least this is the mainstream version of events – others, I know, will contest that and offer arguments for a much older origin. Of course if we’re talking about religious Zionism as opposed to political Zionism, then the origin is much older; it didn’t go by that name, but the notion that the land of Israel had always belonged to the Jewish people spiritually or that it was promised to the Children of Israel by the Biblical God is an ancient one (and of course no sound basis for 20th century nation-building).

It was the Colonial Powers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, however, particularly Great Britain, that actively pursued the Zionist agenda under the guidance of powerful and wealthy British Jews such as Lord Rothschild, resulting in the famous Balfour Declaration. The British made war-time promises during World War I to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Although mass Jewish immigration to Palestine began occurring after the First World War, it wasn’t until after the Second World War and the Holocaust that the agenda was comprehensively fulfilled. Among many others, the prolific writer, researcher and speaker David Icke has written extensively about ‘Rothschild Zionism’, so I won’t get into that here, but simply advise you to seek out Icke’s works if you’re interested (he is an authority on that subject).

Another cornerstone of Zionist lore is the fabled book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, believed by some to be the blue-print for the ‘global Zionist conspiracy’; we’ll come back to that later in this post (but please note that ‘Zionist Conspiracy’ doesn’t mean ‘Jewish Conspiracy’ – one can suggest the former without implying the latter).

Despite Britain’s official actions, however, neither public nor government opinion was unanimous in its support for the excessive commitment made by Britain to further the Zionist agenda. Winston Churchill, in a 1922 telegraph, is recorded to have written of “a growing movement of hostility against Zionist policy in Palestine,” adding that “it is increasingly difficult to meet the argument that it is unfair to ask the British taxpayer, already overwhelmed with taxation, to bear the cost of imposing on Palestine an unpopular policy.” This disapproval of political Zionism has continued for all the decades since and is even more widespread and vehement today than it was a century ago. While much of this is also bound up in anti-Semitism and anti Jewish propaganda, a lot of the opposition to Zionism is also from respectable, reputable sources.Gandhi wrote in 1938; “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs…. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract.”

And contrary to the view propagated by some that anti-Zionism is ‘anti-semitism’, Jewish speakers have at various points also spoken out openly against the Zionist agenda; among them, (Rabbi) Elmer Berger published The Jewish Dilemma, in which he argued that Jewish “assimilation” was still the best path for Jews in the modern world andnot the segregation and siege mentality of the Zionist state; in his opinion Zionism itself was simply resigning to the prevailing racial myths about Jews and playing into them.

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Orthodox Jews protesting against Zionism.

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In 1975 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that designated Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination”. More contemporaneously, in 2010 the former BBC and ITN journalist Alan Hartpublished Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, while famous atheist-in-chief Richard Dawkins said in an interview (speaking about Zionism and the ‘Jewish Lobby’ in the US); “If atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place.” This is just a fraction of stated opposition to Zionism by ‘reputable’, ‘respectable’ people; I reference all of that here to illustrate the point that anti-Zionism isn’t just the preserve of ‘anti-Semites’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’. And again, let’s bear in mind the substantial number of Jews also opposed to Zionism.

It couldn’t be denied, even by the most ardent Zionist supporters, that the influence of political Zionism along with many of the actions/policies of the State of Israel have, aside from the long-term oppression of the Palestinian people, contributed massively to the polarisation of the Middle East and the growth of radicalism. Aside from the destructive, toxic effect the creation of the State of Israel had at the point of inception (in Palestine itself, but also via knock-on effect on Lebanon, Syria and other neighbours), a divisive, destructive effect has continued through to the present day. It is quite demonstrable, for example, that a longstanding US/Israeli Zionist plan for the redrawing of the Middle East map has been carried out in the last several years, toppling independent governments and stable nations and ultimately seeking the balkanisation and subjugation of Iraq, Syria, Iran and other countries in the region.

The Zionist Plan for the Middle East, also known as the ‘Yinon Plan‘, was the vast strategy composed to ensure Zionist regional superiority via the radical reconfiguration of Israel’s geo-political surroundings through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab nations into smaller and weaker states. The ‘Clean Break‘ strategy also essentially amounted to the same thing. What we have thus far witnessed in Iraq, Syria and Libya can be seen to play into this US-backed Zionist strategy quite clearly; it is particularly relevant to note that Iraq, Syria and Libya were three of the most stable and independent (and non-sectarian) Arab Nationalist states and are now instead three collapsed wastelands waiting to be carved up into pieces.

There’s little question that the Greater Israel project that is Zionism – essentially consisting of the mass migration of Europeans into stolen Arab land – has been a toxic and problematic imposition onto the region; all the more so because the State of Israel has been aggressively propped up, armed and defended by its Western patrons. Something similar can be said of the influence of Wahhabism in the region.Wahhabism, like Zionism, isn’t some centuries old, time-honoured religious sect, but a relatively new political idealogy.

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–The Advent of Wahhabism, the Birth of Saudi Arabia and the (Insidious) Spreading of the Message…

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The modern roots of Wahhabism can be traced to Najd in Saudi Arabia and the 18th century theologianMuhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Far from being regarded a legitimate interpretation of Islam, al-Wahhab was opposed even by his own father and brother for his beliefs. But the movement gained unchallenged precedence in most of the Arabian Peninsula through an alliance between Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the House of Muhammad ibn Saud, which provided political and financial power for al-Wahhab’s idealogies to gain prominence.

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Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.

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This alliance gave birth to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; following the collapse of the (Turkish) Ottoman Empireafter the First World War, the Sauds seized control of the Hijaz and the Arabian peninsula and a nation was founded on the tenets of al-Wahhab – the state-sponsored, dominant form of Islam in the birthplace of Islam.

My initial interest in this area of Arab history admittedly began fifteen years or so ago via the David Lean epicLawrence of Arabia, starring the great Peter O’Toole. Through a love of that 1963 film I read first T.E Lawrence’sSeven Pillars of Wisdom and then read several books concerning the exploits of T.E Lawrence and the Arab Revoltduring the First World War, as well as the Sykes-Picot Agreement (referenced by today’s Islamic State/ISIS in its ‘manifesto’) and the actions of the British and French Colonial governments in regard to the Middle East after the war.

The setting up of the House of Saud as the royal family and the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia occurred despite the fact that agreements had been made during the war to endorse and support not the Saudis but the Hashemites. It was the Hashemite Arabs, not the Saudis, that had launched the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks and had been the most involved in the campaign. Yet it was the Wahhabi-inspired Saudi faction that gained the real power from the post-war situation.The reason I bring all of this history up here is to point out that the Wahhabi-inspired Saudi Royal Kingdom that the Middle East has been subject to in the passed century wasn’t the sole – or even the legitimate – claimant to that immensely privileged, immensely powerful, position in the region.

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King Abdul Aziz bin abdul Rahman al-Saud (Saudi Arabia).

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And what has been the legacy of this Wahhabi-inspired Saudi Arabia and its influence? Well, the influence on Arabia itself and much of the surrounding region is incontrovertible. Aside from the fact that the Wahhabi doctrines have been a major influence on extremism, Islamism and terrorism (Osama bin Laden himself was a Wahhabist and almost all Islamist extremism, including all the Takfiri or Salafist groups, follows an essentially Wahhabi ideology), the ideologies have been methodically disseminated across the Islamic world for decades via Saudi wealth funding ‘education’ and religious literature to universities and mosques everywhere from Egypt and Iraq to Pakistan and Indonesia. Worse, the Saudi-funded dissemination of Wahabist-inspired propaganda has for a long time been spreading beyond the Middle East and into Western societies, especially the Muslim communities in the UK.

A recent two-year study conducted by Dr Denis MacEoin, an Islamic studies expert who taught at the University of Fez, uncovered a hoard of “malignant literature” inside as many as a quarter of Britain’s mosques.All of it had been published and distributed by agencies linked to the government of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

The leaflets, DVDs and journals were full of statements that homosexuals should be burnt, stoned or thrown from mountains or tall buildings, with adulterers and apostates (those who try to change their religion) proscribed a similar fate. Women were portrayed as intellectually inferior and in need of “beating when they transgressed” orthodox Islamic codes, while children over the age of 10 should be beaten if they did not pray. Half of the literature was written in English, suggesting it was targeted at younger British Muslims who don’t speak Arabic or Urdu. The material, openly available in many of the mosques, openly advises British Muslims to segregate themselves from non-Muslims.

This isn’t new information, of course. Investigative journalists have uncovered similar things on numerous occasions, while people who’ve actually grown up within the Muslim communities have been aware of such ideas and literature for a long time. Saudi-funded Wahhabist literature can be cited as a major influence (though not the sole influence) on theindoctrination of young British men alienated from mainstream society and on the seduction of men into extremist organisations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS/Daesh the world over. Worse in places like Pakistan where, unlike in the UK, most young men aren’t privileged with access to a high standard of education or to reliable sources of public information but do have plenty of access to religious schools and mosques, many of which teach from Saudi-funded literature.

This is in fact a key point: the Saudi-funded literature and material has traditionally targeted poorer areas in the Muslim world, such as the poorer parts of countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan or Indonesia, where education infrastructure is limited and there are limited resources. In those cases, Saudi wealth is able to pay for the building or upkeep of schools or mosques – but on the condition that their Wahhabi-centered interpretation of Islam is taught and distributed. As a result of this process taking place over many years, scores of young men grow up on this extremist interpretation of Islam, because it’s forced on them and they lack access to more sophisticated education or information. Essentially, they don’t know any better anymore. Interestingly, it was traditionally less common for this sort of Wahhabi-centered indoctrination to take place in more developed or sophisticated Arab countries like Gaddafi’s Libya, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or pre-war Iraq. This is partly because those were all strong, independent societies, which – at the state level, at least – were more invested in a sense of national pride and cultural identity than they were in religious fundamentalism. Indeed, in places like Syria and Gaddafi-era Libya (read more about Gaddafi’s Libya here), the state was engaged in a long campaign to suppress religious extremism or fundamentalism.

That, however, has changed dramatically since the illegal invasion of Iraq, the international conspiracy in Libya and theWar in Syria. Now those countries are all infested with extremists, Salafists and terrorists all entrenched in the Wahhabi ideology. The so-called ‘Islamic State’ that has been imported into Syria and Iraq is essentially a movement that has ideologically flowed from Wahhabi doctrine. That connection is further exacerbated by the fact that Saudi/Qatari arms and funding is largely behind these militias anyway, with the wars in both Syria and Libya largely bankrolled by the Saudis and Qataris and the emergence of ‘ISIS’ largely being a consequence of that.

Yet while the likes of Afghanistan and Iraq were subject to invasion (and the latter to deliberate destabilization), and the overthrow of the governments of Syria and Libya (two countries that had little, if any, influence on the growth of global Islamism or extremism) were openly encouraged and aided by the major Western governments, Saudi Arabia – no doubt partly due to its wealth and value to the US and its allies – has never at any point been subject to any threat or been held to international questioning over the cynical and methodical dissemination of extremist doctrines across the Muslim world.

–World War I, the Wahhabists, the Hashemites, Lawrence of Arabiaand the War in the Desert…

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Going back to the First World War and history, it’s worth reminding ourselves again that the Saudis weren’t necessarily supposed to be the rulers of Arabia. The Hashemite, Hussein bin Ali, was the Sharif and Emir of Meccafrom 1908 until 1917. The Arab Revolt of World War I consisted of Transjordanian tribes, along with other tribes of the Hijaz and Levant regions, fighting against the Turkish Empire on the side of Britain and her allies. The revolt was launched by the Hashemites and led by Sherif Hussein of Mecca, not by the Saudis or Wahhabists. It was supported by Britain and the World War I Allies, who used the momentum of the Arab nationalists (who wanted independence) to further the broader war effort against Germany and her allies.

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T.E Lawrence (“of Arabia”).

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The definitive chronicle of the revolt was written by T. E. Lawrence who, as a young British Army officer, played a key liaison role during the revolt. He published the chronicle in 1922 under the title Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the basis for Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence himself was of course was one the most fascinating and iconic figures of the twentieth century; and while the Seven Pillars of Wisdom can be questioned for accuracy in some regards, even his detractors and enemies couldn’t refute the vital role played by the Hashemites in the revolt and it is a fact of history that the British government of the time promised the Hashemite Arabs far more than they delivered after the war.

In September 1918, supporters of the Arab Revolt in Damascus declared a government loyal to the “Sharif of Mecca”. Hussein had been declared ‘King of the Arabs’ by a handful of religious leaders and other notables in Mecca. And after the Turkish Caliphate was abolished, Hussein declared himself Caliph, “King of the Hejaz”, and King of all Arabs (malik bilad-al-Arab).However, Hussein was ousted and driven out of Arabia by the Sauds; a rival clan with whom the Hashemites already had bad history, having earlier fought against them due to radical religious differences (primarily the doctrines of al-Wahhab). Though the British had supported (and utilised) Hussein from the start of the Arab Revolt, they decided not to help Hussein repel the Saudi attacks, which eventually seized the key cities of Mecca, Medina and Jeddah.The hope of a Hashemite-ruled Arabia was gone, though Hussein continued to use the title “Caliph” even in his exile.

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Emir Faisal bin Hussein, king of Syria and Iraq, with T.E Lawrence second from right.

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In the aftermath of the war, the Arabs had found themselves freed from centuries of Ottoman rule, but instead were then under the colonial rule of France and the United Kingdom (despite British war-time promises that this would not be the case). When these colonial mandates eventually ended, the sons of Hussein were made the kings of Transjordan (later Jordan), and Syria and Iraq. However, the monarchy in Syria was short-lived, and consequently Hussein’s son Faisal instead presided over the newly-established state of Iraq. But these were mere conciliatory offerings compared to what had originally been intended and desired by the Hashemites; it was the Saudis who were the real winners, being installed into a powerful kingdom that has lasted to this dayand shows not the slightest sign of weakening.

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–“The Memoirs of Mr Hempher” and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion…–

Zionism and Wahhabism have both demonstrably been divisive, destructive forces in the region (and beyond). Zionism has led to the unending plight and humiliation of the Palestinian people, as well as ensuring that the modern State of Israel is perceived in an entirely negative way and is the least popular nation on earth. While Wahhabism has inspired an immeasurable amount of extremism, terrorist ideologies, indoctrination and the toxic polarisation of societies.

We can look at the influence of Wahhabism in the world at this stage in time and legitimately call it a ‘cancer’. But what about at its root? What about the source? Given the prevalent view in conspiracy theory lore of the “Zionist conspiracy” behind the Balfour Declaration and so much of what has transpired since, is it possible that Wahhabism, which began to gain momentum at around the same time, was also something much more than it appeared to be even at the time?Is it possible Wahhabism wasn’t the product of some quaintly rustic Arabian desert preacher, but something far more cynical?

The Memoirs of Mr. Hempher, The British Spy to the Middle East (also known as Confessions of a British Spy) has long been regarded as a forged document; the document, purporting to be the account of an 18th-century British agent, “Hempher”, of his instrumental role in founding Wahhabism as part of a conspiracy to corrupt Islam, first appeared in 1888 in Turkish. It has been described as “an Anglophobic variation” on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

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–Most conspiracy researchers know about the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was regarded as blue-print of the perceived “Jewish conspiracy”. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, like Confessions of a British Spy, has long since been dismissed by mainstream sources as a ‘forgery’ or hoax.

The Protocols has been widely translated and disseminated and is still regarded as factual and historical in much of the Muslim world, informing a great deal of the prevailing Middle-Eastern view of “the Jews” and “the Zionists”. Those who refute the validity of the book, however, cite it as a massive contributing cause of anti-Semitism and ‘Jew hatred’ in Muslim societies and beyond, not to mention the notorious book having been a recurring theme in the Nazis anti-Jewish world-view. Unfortunately the Nazis, like many in Muslim societies today, were intemperate, incapable of separating ‘Zionism’ as a political force from ‘Jews’ as a race; the reality is that, if the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is/was a legitimate historical item, the Zionism it depicts is no more representative of Jews as a people than Wahhabism is of the global Muslim community – which is to say that only a relatively small percentage of Muslims in the world are Wahhabis, and likewise in regard to the Jewish community and Zionism. But conspiracies of the kind we’re talking about operate at an insidious, often unperceived, level; that is to say the number of Muslims and the number of Jews unknowingly subject to Wahhabism and Zionism respectively is much higher.But what of Confessions of a British Spy? Is it mere coincidence that both these political ideologies, both originating around the same time, both of which have ensured the long-term toxicity of the Middle East, both also happened to havebooks claiming to reveal their true origins and agendas – both of which were later dismissed by mainstream commentators as ‘forgeries’?

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Was Confessions of a British Spy telling the truth? Was Wahhabism founded by outside agencies as a long-term plan to ‘corrupt Islam’? Is it just a coincidence that this is EXACTLY what Wahhabism appears to have done over the course of a century – corrupted the Islamic religion to the point where it is now widely regarded by many non-Muslims as a source of evil and ill in the world? Islam, let’s remember, wasn’t always regarded with the kind of stigma it now has, but rather the opposite; Islamic societies are historically perceived as having been intellectually and even scientifically enlightened at a time when Christianity in the West was characterised by inquisitions, torture, mass persecutions, execution pyres and utterly ridiculous doctrines and proclamations. Historical accounts tell of the brutality of Christian Crusaders and the comparative nobility ofSalahuddin and the Muslim armies. The Islamic world had its ‘enlightenment’ long before the Christian West, despite being a younger religion. At a time when Europeans were burning ‘witches’, the classical Islamic cities of Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo were centers of learning and philosophy.The slow degradation and polarisation of Islamic societies is something that has only been happening in the last hundred years or so (as the growth of Wahhabism has done its work, like a slow-acting virus with a long incubation period). And it is only in the last ten to fifteen years that the influence of Wahhabist doctrines has become a prominent international issue.

In regard to Confessions of a British Spy being a hoax; maybe it was. But you’d wonder why someone would create a hoax document to slander a then-minor religious sect that wouldn’t have any great relevance until almost a century later?

–9/11, the Collapse of Islam and the ‘Clash of Civilisations’…

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Moving on, why did King Hussein’s Western allies not help the Hashemites when they were being driven from Arabia by the Sauds after the First World War? And why, for decades, have the US, Britain, France and other world powers not made any issue over the Saudis’ funding of extremist literature and ideologies? And yet we seem more than eager to jump in when there’s a chance to overthrow a progressive, secular leader like Gadaffi in Libya or an Assad in Syria – both undemocratic dictatorships, perhaps, but both relatively idyllic societies when compared to Saudi Arabia (although not anymore, of course) and neither of them being a major factor in the indoctrination of young minds across the world or the spread of terrorism.

Why were the Saudis not brought to task when all of the 9/11 hijackers were known to originate from Saudi Arabia, not Iraq? The list of curious questions goes on and on. And without digressing too much here, it should be borne in mind that one of the most prominent 9/11 conspiracy theories is the Phillip Marshall theory that the WTC attack was a US/Saudi plot and not a mere Al-Qaeda operation (Marshall, for those not aware of him, was found dead – along with both his children – from gunshot wounds to the head in his home, in one of the most suspicious deaths imaginable). Two central and recurring features of most 9/11 conspiracy research are the possible involvement of Saudi agencies and the possible involvement of Mossad/Israel in collusion with US agencies.

Putting that to one side, however, the point is that when we look at the history of the Middle East, it becomes increasingly difficult not to wonder if the divisions, general toxicity, and the wars and apocalyptic scenarios that are reaching their apex here at the beginning of the 21st century may have been orchestrated far back in history, having always been intended to reach this point. That is the view many have of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – that the supposedly ‘hoax’ document actually made this clear to a large extent.The more one studies the history, the more one wonders if the truth aboutWahhabism and its origins may be a similar tale; and not just a similar tale, but aconcordant operation, with these two ideologies – Wahhabism and Zionism – both operating hand-in-hand to create the toxic conditions in the region that we have today.

It is worth noting also that the conspiracy hinted at in Confessions of a British Spy still enjoys some level of currency in parts of the Middle East, particularly Iraq, where it is considered by many to be as legitimate as Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

It is worth noting too that as much as the US is seen as propping up Israel, it is also seen as permanently propping up the Saudi regime; much to the displeasure of other nations and leaders in the region (such as Gadaffi and Assad, to name just two). Both the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could be regarded – and areregarded by many in the Middle East – as artificial states imposed upon the region and kept in place by Western powers (primarily the US) for the purposes of a long-term agenda. Just as Israel is armed to the teeth by its Western patrons, so too is the Saudi state, which is currently decimating the small nation of Yemen in an illegal war and using almost entirely British or American weaponry – with not a word of condemnation from Western governments. The perception is often inescapable that key Western governments march to the beat of the Saudi state, just as much as with Israel; and all of this being despite Saudi Arabia’s longstanding role as the key source of Islamist terrorism and extremism.

It is also increasingly evident that the Wahhabi and Zionist states have common interests and work hand-in-hand in many regards; this can be seen for example in their shared anti-Iran policies and their shared involvement in supporting the extremist war against the Syrian government.

–The 21st Century and the Bitter Legacy of Wahhabism in the Islamic World…

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The influence of Zionism has been written and talked about at tremendous length elsewhere for many decades (both accurately and exaggeratedly, depending on the source), but the Wahhabi doctrines can be seen to be behind most of the extremist, Islamist movements of the passed several decades, including Al-Qaeda and now Islamic State. It would be impossible to calculate how many minds, how many young men, across the world have been indoctrinated by Wahhabi influences. Wahhabism isn’t just an especially intolerant version of Islam – it is an ideology. So is Zionism, which is often used to indoctrinate young Jewish people (and a lot of quite stupid American Christians) to an essentially extremist, uncompromising viewpoint.

That influence is largely invisible to those observing events from the outside and can be regarded almost asindoctrination by stealth. While no one has ever denied the existence of Wahhabism or its prevalence in Saudi Arabia, it has only been in recent years that the extent of Wahhabi material circulating around the Muslim world has started to be understood. While Saudi religious influence can’t be cited as the sole force behind the rise of fanaticism and extremism in the Middle East and much of the Islamic world beyond, it is a central factor, along with US foreign policy and the State of Israel; and if all of those factors were to be viewed operating in concert with one another and taken as one then it would obviously be the principal driving force behind events in that part of the world.

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Even if you wanted to cite other causal factors instead – for example, populations being oppressed by various dictatorships – the argument could be made that those dictatorships have historically been propped up by either Saudi or US influence (or both) at some time or another (though not Gaddafi – and look how that ended up for him). If we look at the historic events of the Arab Spring, some tend to forget that Bahrain, for example, had its own popular protests by civilians asking for basic rights and liberties. Those protests were crushed and received no support or actions of solidarity from the US and other Western powers; yet the Powers That Be went out of their way to assist the violent, brutal overthrow of Gadaffi in Libya and have spent years now trying to do the same in Syria and at maximum cost to the Syrian people.

Unsurprisingly Gadaffi’s Libya and Assad’s Syria were/are two dictatorships with no sympathy or love for the Saudi Wahhabists. And the same can be said for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Whereas the leadership of Bahrainhas full Saudi support. Even more ridiculous, the Saudis were themselves being ‘consulted’ by Western powers on what to do about the ‘Gadaffi problem’ (just as they are were principally consulted on what to do about Assad and Syria, and just as they were a major influence on the push to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq).It is curious that while regimes were collapsing or being attacked elsewhere in the region (even the Mubbarak regime in Egypt), the Saudi regime never appeared to be in the least bit of trouble, despite being hated by so many of its neighboursand despite being even more oppressive than the other regimes accused of being ‘undemocratic’.

According to social scientist Quintan Wiktorowicz, even the term “Wahhabi” is often used by its opponents “to denote foreign influence”, particularly in countries where they are “a small minority of the Muslim community, but have made recent inroads in “converting” the local population to the ideology”. Through this long-term method of infiltration, foreign nations can be interfered with, movements stirred up and regimes damaged or even toppled. Muammar Gadaffi certainly knew about Wahhabists – and hated them with a vengeance (he also made the mistake of openly confronting the Saudi Royal Family at Arab Summits). So did Saddam Hussein. Both are now gone. The Iranians aren’t too fond of them either and have subsequently been on Saudi Arabia, Israel and America’s enemies list for a long time, the subject of a long-term vilification campaign. Again, let’s note that neither Iran, nor Syria, not Gaddafi’s Libya, nor Hussein’s Iraq, had ever contributed to the export or spread of extremism or terrorism against the West.

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The mainstream media’s version of the murder of Gadaffi.

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It is difficult for someone like me to look at the international conspiracy that was conducted against Gadaffi and the people of Libya and not wonder what alliance of forces and interests were truly behind it and why. That subject warrants a whole essay in itself (which you can read in book form here: I spent over a year studying Libya to try to make a definitive analysis of what happened), but by the same token it becomes difficult to look at the crisis that has torn apart once-peaceful Syria and not wonder the same thing, not to mention Iraq and the rise of Islamic State. It is an established fact that the Saudis and their satellite states have been funding and orchestrating the ultra-violent terrorists in Syria since the very beginning of that conflict (and it’s evident that Israel too has been involved in aiding the Syrian rebels); it is reasonable then to wonder if a Zionist/Wahhabist agenda is being played out in unison (with, of course, US/Neo-Con backing).

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In conclusion, it is of course beyond the powers of this blogger to comment decisively on whether eitherThe Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion or The Memoirs of Mr Hempher are both 19th century hoaxes or genuine historic items that expose the true origins of two of the most destructive, toxic ideologies of the 20th and 21st centuries. What can be observed with utter objectivity, however, is the substantial role both ideologies have played in creating the harsh, apocalyptic-looking conditions we have in the Middle East and much of the world beyond today. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the history, you cannot help but view the bitter sectarianism, wars, divisions and bloodshed of today without perceiving the large shadows of Zionism and Wahhabism looming over them; and that’s before we even factor in the issue of Shia Islam and the fact that both Zionists and Wahhabists appear wholly unwilling to tolerate Shia influence in the region; this is also particularly interesting in light of the fact that US policy has been to aggravate a Sunni/Shia conflict in the region as much as possible.The bleak picture is of a societal and political cancer seeded at the dawn of the 20th century and reaching its deadliest point at the beginning of the 21st.

When you read the next report or news item about ‘Islamic State’ atrocities in Iraq, the bloodshed in Syria and themethodical destruction of Syrian culture and society that has occurred in the last three years, the destabilization of Libya or IDF bombings of the Gaza Strip, among other things, consider that all of this (and more) may have been orchestrated over a hundred years ago; an agenda that pre-dated the First World War and that may bring about the Third…